About the author: Lina Younes has been working for EPA since 2002 and chairs EPA’s Multilingual Communications Task Force. Prior to joining EPA, she was the Washington bureau chief for two Puerto Rican newspapers and she has worked for several government agencies.

Among the survey’s findings, over 80 percent of the Latino voters polled said that energy and environmental issues have “a lot” or “some” impact on the quality of life and health of their families. The presenters noted that the survey dispels the common myth that Hispanics do not care about the environment. Here, at EPA, we do not buy into that misrepresentation of our fellow Hispanic- Americans. In fact, over the years, we have been actively reaching out to the Hispanic community via the Web, the traditional Hispanic media and to Hispanic community leaders throughout the nation.

As the title suggests, the main objective is to go beyond translating EPA publications into Spanish, but to truly engage the Hispanic community as partners to improve access to environmental and public health information in a relevant manner while fostering greater involvement en nuestras comunidades.

Beyond Translation is gaining momentum. At EPA Research Triangle Park, they have quickly adapted the initiative to the needs of Hispanic leaders and partners in North Carolina and others EPA regions will soon follow suit.

4 Comments

Sierra Club
May 01, 2008 @
15:11:49

Thank you for sharing the results of the Sierra Club first-ever national survey of Hispanic voters on environmental issues. All the results and discussion are online at http://www.sierraclub.org/ecocentro/survey and you can contact ecocentro@sierraclub.org for more information or to discuss ways to use the new polling information to support your work.

I am aware that not everyone that visits our blog is fully bilingual. Nonetheless, I would like to share the Spanish comments we received from one of our fellow bloggers. Here’s a translation of Mr. Escobedo’s comments:

“As you comment in your article, more and more Spanish speakers consult the EPA Web site to find “fresh” information on environmental issues. I visit it at least once a week because my professional activities are related to the reduction of air pollution in industry. Even though in training to become a chemist, they “force” us to speak and understand English, it is much more enjoyable to read this important information in our beautiful language, Spanish. Therefore, I would like to express my appreciation for this initiative of broadening the information available to the Spanish-speaking public. Thanks.”

Now– I would like to thank Mr. Escobedo for taking the time to comment in Spanish and encourage him to visit the EPA Web site. And I would like to reiterate that we have tried to improve EPA Spanish language materials on the Web. Our goal is to increase environmental awareness so that everyone can become a better environmental steward–on Earth Day and everyday–anywhere in the world.

Insofar as the comments of our fellow U.S. Citizen, I would like to direct him to the U.S. Census Report on Language Use and English-Speaking Ability: 2000:[http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/c2kbr-29.pdf]
which shows that over 18 percent of the total population of Americans aged 5 and over report4ed they speak a language other than English at home.

By providing environmental information in Spanish and other languages, here at EPA, we are trying to lift linguistic barriers to foster greater environmental understanding regardless of the language spoken so that we can all work together as partners to protect the environment.